When Kenyan deputy president William Ruto appeared in the dock in The Hague on Tuesday it was a seminal moment for international justice. Yet Kenya’s outrageous, if unsurprising, decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court means that only two outcomes are now possible, and neither involve Ruto or his boss, Uhuru Kenyatta, serving any jail time. All this adds up to a situation where, despite the progress made in getting Ruto and Kenyatta to actually stand trial, neither are likely to serve any jail time. They’ve been one step ahead of the prosecution ever since their names were released, and they can now wait comfortably for the trial to take its course, knowing that even if they are found guilty there is no one in power in Kenya who will compel them to serve their time or who will hand them over to the relevant authorities. They, after all, are the authorities in Kenya and they’ve secured the continent’s support. More likely both expect that the combination of the prosecution’s weak case and mistakes made in building it, coupled with the reluctance of nervous witnesses to speak out against them, will result in their innocence being proclaimed by the highest court in the world.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 18:52:27 +0000
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